Alumni story: Nicholas ‘Nick’ Lemieux, RIT, '13
Nicholas ‘Nick’ Lemieux is 2013 graduate of RIT who has worked at a few tech startups since leaving RIT including Datto Inc., a data protection services company, and Jebbit, a digital marketing technology company. His most recent venture was launching his own company with two co-founders – Arcane Labs, which builds artificial intelligence web-design software.
Nick started in the Advertising and Public Relations program of the School of Communication before switching to the Multidisciplinary Studies program (now the School of Individualized Study) so he could pursue more computer programming classes.
Nick recalls that RIT generally and the School of Communication in particular immersed him in a diverse culture with different people from all kinds of backgrounds and interests. He appreciated the flexibility his studies gave him to take a wide variety of classes based on his interests. And he enjoyed having School of Communication professors “who had experience in the field and who had experienced working with and for large brands.”
He says that given the chance to do it over again he would definitely take more School of Communication public speaking classes because public speaking is a skill “you can’t really take for granted” and is something he finds himself using every day whether he is talking to executives or doing a presentation for a boss. Unlike other skills that might be able to be picked up or looked up online, public speaking just takes a lot of doing it to get better at it, Nick says.
The interview was conducted on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2017 in a noisy Starbucks in Boston (because Nick was then working on his second start-up, out of his home) by Mike Johansson, Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication.
Read the transcript
